I'm divorcing a narcissist after 8 years of crazy. This is my story of getting out and healing from the abuse.

Sleeping Next to a Monster

I was just aimlessly scrolling through Pinterest trying to kill some time during an afternoon slump at work and I came across this quote. It triggered a little rabbit hole of memories that made me want to write and share.

“As a little girl, I was scared that there would be monsters sleeping under my bed. Never did I imagine that I would grow up, and have a real one sleeping in it, right beside me, and oh so very soundly.”

I can vividly remember laying in bed listening to him snore soundly asleep while I was trying to quietly sob so that I wouldn’t wake him up and make things worse. Laying with my back facing him, on the smallest sliver of the edge of the bed that I could possibly take up, holding the side of the pillow over my face to muffle my sobs. Most nights I would cry myself to sleep or lay awake with insomnia from the stress while he just slept like a baby.

In the beginning, I used to lay there hoping he would wake up and reach for me and hold me and comfort me and actually want to make me feel better. In the middle I would pray that he wouldn’t wake up because it would just mean more trouble for me. By the end, his snoring and his peace was like nails down a chalkboard for me… it would literally make my blood boil that someone so cruel and so mean and so heartless could sleep at night without issue.

There were plenty of nights where he was so mad at me for one reason or another that he wouldn’t even let me sleep in the bed. I would literally be laying on the hard wood floor with a pillow and a small blanket from the couch… listening to him snore from there. Then there were the many, many times where he would lock me out of the bedroom completely. I would lay on the floor, outside of the locked door, sobbing… like snot dripping down my face and puddling on the floor sobbing. There was that one foolish time I actually went to the couch and thought I was going to be able to sleep there, but oh no. The Narcissist came out at some point screaming at me that I obviously didn’t care about him at all and only cared about myself… and how dare I think that I deserved to even sleep on the couch. That night, he dragged me by my hair across the hard wood floor and left me in the hallway without even the blanket… I didn’t dare get back up for it.

I didn’t get much sleep during my years with The Narcissist. My heart wouldn’t let me… my desperate need to try to fix things, make things better, prove my love, prove my worth… I was hurting and sleep was hard when I was hurting. Sometimes, my body and brain would just shut down because I couldn’t even process anymore abuse…. but those were only at times when I actually felt momentarily safe… like in the middle of a movie, during a car ride, or in the middle of the day when he was at work. For the most part though, if he wasn’t intentionally sleep depriving me… he was sleeping soundly while I was suffering.

15 thoughts on “Sleeping Next to a Monster”

You took the exact words out of my mouth. I feel the same way about my husband.
I would wake up in the middle of the night with my heart pounding. I try to turn over and fall back to sleep. But, my anxiety wins. I am continually reminded that he is right next to me with his compulsive snoring.
I am left also with a sliver of the bed. I do not even want our bodies to be touching. It’s amazing that you can be sleeping next to someone who you hardly even know. Every time I try to understand his behavior, I am up the whole night! I have finally come to the conclusion that I will never be able to understand him.

I have been asking myself the same question. Why am I settling for less? I know I deserve much more in life.
I guess being beaten down to nothing, for the past 17 years, made me feel like I don’t deserve happiness.
He has told me numerous times that “I treat you good! Nothing ever makes you happy!” He also told me that all of his friends treat their wives the same way.
I have felt like I was the one to blame and I was the one who would never be happy. I finally realized that it is HIM and not me.

I would often hear, “You should be thankful and more appreciative of me because when I die you will get all this and my retirement/pension.” With my luck I’d die before him and then what? but no amount of money was going to make me stay and put up with his shit for thirty more years. — I remember thinking, is this what I deserve? is this pay back for something? am I making good on a karmic debt? the answer is…..NO. You do deserve greatness, you deserve to know what it’s like to not be scared and to sleep peacefully.

I wrote a few posts on this subject. I know we can get into our heads and allow fear to take over. TRUST me when I say that once you give fear the middle finger and take that first step you will feel so much better.

You are right! I do not want one cent from him. He has said the same thing to me.
I have given him so much and in return he has given me nothing but grief. I am still holding on and praying daily….. It is very difficult. Especially living with someone who is so blinded by their sin.

Pardon! I believe you should try to read her other articles to realize the authir recognizes a lot of how they came into this and how are sharing what they learned of the other person so readers don’t feel they have to accept so little of themselves.

I can relate to just cross the room and wrap you in his arms and hold you without any words. Or in the middle of it all, to cross the room and wrap his arms around me and just hold me, maybe even apologize for making me feel this way. (fantasy world!) That never happened for me either. He just made me feel like I was wrong, or weak, or over-emotional most times. Once or twice, when I was upset about something and we were arguing, or he was just disgusted with my reaction to something, I finally blurted out, “If I have to tell you the right thing to say or do it doesn’t make a difference.” It’s like they need a script sometimes to pretend to be a person with normal emotions. And the idea of making sure that your bodies don’t even touch or bump into each other in the middle of the night, in a king sized bed, became a well practiced habit the last few years.
Hopefully you are sleeping much better now. I know that I am.

It’s always interesting to learn/read about someone else’s experience with a narcissist. It really is a me too moment. I often find myself nodding in agreement when reading. This post is no different. I had so much trouble sleeping while I was married to my ex. It persisted for weeks. I finally decided to set up a camera on my nightstand to see what was going on. The playback was eye opening. I was literally rocking in my sleep with my arms wrapped around myself as if I was trying to comfort myself. There was so much stress, sadness and anger in my life at that time. It all stopped once the ex narc left.

This is so sad! I can relate to the crying in bed, him snoring and sleeping like a baby while I was unable to sleep because my brain couldn’t stop working trying to understand how my life got so messes up and sad and how was I going to make him happy with me, go back to the beginning. But I cannot compare my experience to yours. I am so sorry. Mine never hit me. Sometimes I wish he did so I would have had proof of his abuse. But man! What he did to you is unforgivable. I am so glad you’re out.

Mine slept like a baby too and that quote…wow is that the truth! Mine did reach out to comfort me but only to stab me in the back. I always knew the nicer the harder he was trying to cover for something else. It was awful.
You deserve so much more than that. I hope you know it. I feel like they all must snore. Snoring, sleeping and feeling no regret about their actions. What an empty soul they possess. Hollow.

Your post really made me very sad for the person you were – and the person I was too. I was not the main supply but remember being upset and him just falling asleep. Or when he made me sleep in a motel one morning so that his main supply wouldn’t find out and I was so angry about it I wouldn’t speak to him – he sat in the back of the car out in the country searching google earth for a road he was sure existed. And here I was thinking he was sharing my silence because he was trying to figure out how to fix things. No, even though I ended up having his child and his wife if still with him, that woman expects very little for herself. I pity her.

The day I realized I had married someone like my NPD, emotionally abusive, mother was the day I decided to leave. Getting the right therapy is a MUST. Learning the origins of why we gravitate toward, and stay with, these types of people is imperative to seeing personal patterns and breaking the abusive cycles. Shame on sociopath, narcissist individuals who prey on innocent children and unsuspecting adults, and thank God for the public awareness and professional help that is available. We have to be vigilant and care for ourselves, because those of us who are preyed upon by narcissists are caretakers and empaths who tend to lose ourselves in other people. And that does no one any good. Thank you for sharing your story.

I don’t even know how many times I laid in bed wishing he’d come to his senses and wrap me up in his arms and cuddle me. Just like you I laid awake sobbing or holding in my sobs afraid he’d hear. I hated how he could go to sleep so fast….. Didn’t he care? the answer was no because in his head it was me who got him to the point of treating me the way he did.

I remember one night after he demolished my lap top and yelled about who knows what ….he stood by the garage door and said, “I can’t believe you got me to the point that I hate myself. This is all your fault.” I probably sat on the couch wrong or breathed wrong or parked not to his liking. ….regardless, it was always my fault.

I didn’t realize my husband had NPD until after I filed for divorce doing random google searches. I started to shake with horror as I read an article that could have been written by myself. I liken it to finding out you were married to a serial killer.
My ex had a grand time during the discard phase because I could not walk. I had a fluke knee injury at the same time as a pre-existing knee injury. Long story but I was trapped with him for five months while undergoing two knee scopes within a few months. He reveled in his cruelty towards me. I screamed and cried everyday. The shock was too much. My mother is why I survived and why I walk.
I never saw it coming and I am a former Mental Health Case Manager.
I filed for divorce the minute I could walk post-op. That shocked him for sure. It’s been about 15 months since I filed for divorce, and I am still trying to heal.